Cross-posted at Tall Tales
McCain today, continuing to push the socialism storyline, via the AP:
He's more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist.... Sen. Obama's economic policy is from the far left of American politics and ours is in the center.
The actual policy McCain is attacking, from the same AP article:
Obama is proposing tax increases on families making over $250,000 and individuals making over $200,000 and tax cuts for the 95 percent of workers making less than $200,000.
Pretty radical stuff ... reminds me of someone ... oh, yeah ... the last centrist Republican president:
[C]haracterizing Obama's plan to tax the nation's top earners at 39 percent instead of 36 percent as socialist is absurd. Dwight Eisenhower taxed top earners at 91 percent.
That's courtesy of Andrew Romano, at Newsweek, who continues:
Richard Nixon taxed them at more than 50 percent. Even Ronald Reagan didn't lower the top marginal rate to less than 50 percent until the last two years of his second term. Were these Republicans secret socialists, too?
The answer, of course, is no....
Ultimately, McCain has every right to talk about taxes in the closing days of the campaign. Voters deserve a serious debate on the issue. But right now, he's treating us as if we're too dumb to understand the difference between socialism and a competing vision of the top marginal tax rate. That's not just interesting. It's disappointing.
Disappointing, indeed.
Fortunately, there is little reason to believe Americans will buy McCain's "Obama is a Socialist like Ike" reasoning.
Back in April, Gallup asked its traditional question about tax policy, and got these responses, which align much more closely with the Democratic position than the Republican position:
As I read off some different groups, please tell me if you think they are paying their FAIR share in federal taxes, paying too MUCH or paying too LITTLE?
A. Lower-income people
Fair Share 32%
Too Much 52%
Too Little 13%
B. Middle-income people
Fair Share 50%
Too Much 43%
Too Little 4%
C. Upper-income people
Fair Share 24%
Too Much 9%
Too Little 63%
D. Corporations
Fair Share 15%
Too Much 6%
Too Little 73%
More specific to McCain's "redistributionist-in-chief" charge against Obama, yesterday saw the release of a new Gallup poll, written up by TPM's Election Center:
The latest polling, taken amid McCain's big Joe the Plumber assault, shows that 58% favor a fairer distribution of wealth than exists now, while only 37% say the current distribution is equitable.
I have little doubt McCain's "socialism" attacks -- which have been going on for weeks -- have energized some hard-core partisans in a sub-set of that 37% minority, just as a vocal minority consistently criticized FDR as a socialist.
That didn't stop Roosevelt from crushing the Republicans in four straight elections. And it didn't stop Truman from beating Dewey. Nonetheless, throughout their 28 years in the political wilderness, certain Republicans continued to believe in the political potency of the "tax fairness = evil socialism" argument.
Eisenhower disagreed, as did McCain in 2001 and 2003.
Indeed, McCain was better positioned than any Republican other than Colin Powell to seize the moderate Republican mantle of Eisenhower.
Instead, he chose to flip-flop on tax policy, issue a full-throated embrace of the failed Coolidge/Hoover trickle-down philosophy, and lavish praise on its modern-day champion -- George W. Bush:
He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We’re in a long sustained period of economic growth.
- McCain on Bush, March 2007
I think we are better off overall if you look at the entire eight-year period, when you look at the millions of jobs that have been created, the improvement in the economy, et cetera.
- McCain on the Bush Record, January 2008
I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
- McCain on the Bush Economy, August 2008
Ike or Bush.
McCain had a choice.
He made the wrong one.
***
McCain Quotes Collected in Yeah, Right pages 44, 72 & 73
Online Sources: March 2007; January 2008; August 2008